


Good Things Come in Five...

by RisuAlto



Series: Junisce's Story [6]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: F/M, Homecoming, I'm putting this in Jun's Story because there's a brief reference to another Jun story, but it doesn't actually matter, gratuitous descriptions of landscapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 16:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21479710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisuAlto/pseuds/RisuAlto
Summary: Steps.  Minutes.  Breaths.  Kills.  Years.  Memories.  These are the ways in which Sagani has measured the long hunt for Persoq.  These are the things between her and home, and the lights that guide her back to it.
Relationships: Kallu/Sagani, Sagani & The Watcher (Pillars of Eternity)
Series: Junisce's Story [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548025
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Pillars of Eternity Prompts Weekly





	Good Things Come in Five...

**Author's Note:**

> For prompt #0010, "Hunt's End."
> 
> Recommended listening: ["Sunset Path Home"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euMCumjdh3Q) from _Lightning Returns_.

One of the dangers of the landscapes in Naasitaq was that between the ice and snow on the ground, the occasional rushing river, and the blindingly bright skies, either frigid blue or covered in backlit clouds, everything seemed to be constructed from the same shades of white, silver, aqua, and grey. But five years away from this place had dulled the memories—the gorgeous and yet monotonous scenery was something Sagani knew but didn’t _know_. With such unchanging colors, sometimes each moment and step along her journey stretched into long minutes. Sometimes, Sagani found she had taken seven steps in the space of one. 

(Sometimes, Sagani thought of her village and family. Sometimes, she enjoyed the way Eora seemed to sparkle, each inch of ice and flake of snow as sharp as the winds. It was a rush, surreal in its intensity, as though Rymrgand had dragged a claw through the world and blurred its colors together like paint.)

Four months after leaving the Dyrwood, nearly a month after she had come home to the tundra of the Land, the dark shapes of a village crept over the horizon, silhouetted against a crimson and plum sky. Her next breath smelled of the echoes of wood and warmth as she watched distant tendrils of smoke curl into the sky, settling lazily into the clouds like a cat. Memories that she had kept closely guarded through all the years away began to spill over, even more potent than the cold. The shape of the village’s center, the great fire pit amidst a crossroads, was pressed into her skin; the texture of hut roofs she climbed as a child settled into her bones; the scents of her favorite foods filled the air in her lungs. But it was the sound of laughter—her family’s laughter— that wound itself into her muscles and pushed her to chase Itumaak across the snowy plains, fatigue be damned. They raced towards home.

The first steps she took up to the village walls changed nothing—the cold was still cold, the village still contentedly quiet, and the paths beneath her feet as comfortingly familiar as they were changed in her absence. But the ethereal peace didn’t last. 

“Hail!” a voice called in her native tongue. It was strange against Sagani’s ears after speaking Aedyran for so long, but these sounds, too, seeped back into her being and left warmth in their wake. Irumaak stiffened at her heel, zeroing in on a voice he hadn’t heard in so many years.

“Hail, yourself,” Sagani called back, grinning casually.

The young man’s brow was furrowed in confusion as he studied her, recognition fighting its way to the surface. She watched it break through in his eyes, dark blue pools that went wide and then sparkled with glee. “Sagani?” he asked, beginning to match her grin.

She nodded. “Ernlu,” she acknowledged, then reached into her pouch and showed the inert adra figurine. “The Tarneq-Ilitsaak is complete. Here’s hoping you get the night off to celebrate.”

Ernlu laughed behind her as she tucked the statuette away and passed the walls. The light was already shifting from dusk-red to twilight-blue as the shadows around her stretched to cover every inch of ground the village’s firelight would allow them. A few people were still outside, crossing the pathways between houses, but no others seemed to recognize her and Itumaak until she rounded a corner into the center of the village.

The crossroads around Massuk’s great fire pit were not empty, but they might as well have been for the way Sagani’s vision focused, narrowing on a single figure. Coming from the side of the village where Sagani remembered the training grounds to be, coal-black hair twisted into a looped braid on one side, a fur coat draped over one arm and a bow gripped by the other, was a young woman who froze as though struck by an ice blight. Her brown eyes glittered with shock as they caught Sagani’s own.

“Yakona,” Sagani said, a smile wrapping around her entire body as she hurried forwards, casual walk becoming a purposeful jog.

The other dwarf tracked Sagani’s movements with her eyes for several more stunned seconds before she also moved forwards, circling the central fire pit until they stood toe-to-toe. “Mom,” she breathed. She shook her head as though testing whether Sagani would disappear when she stopped.

Sagani felt the wind snatch tears from her eyes as she bundled her daughter into a tight embrace, ignoring the way Yakona’s bow dug into her shoulder as she did. Yakona was still smaller than her, but only just—and her arms were sturdier than before, wound tight with muscle that Sagani knew came from hours and hours of drawing a bowstring. Her weight was solid, Sagani noted with relief, but most of all, Yakona was warm, alive, and shaking with relieved, desperate laughter in her arms.

“So, you decided to pick up a bow, too,” Sagani said, pressing her cheek into Yakona’s hair. 

“Yeah,” Yakona said. Sagani could hear her smile. “I mean—after so many years, we didn’t think you were coming back. I just—I don’t know, I guess if I couldn’t be _with_ you, I wanted to be _like_ you.”

Sagani stepped back and took her daughter’s cheeks in her hands. “Well,” she said proudly, “now you can be both.”

Yakona dropped her bow into the snow and lunged forwards, arms going to wrap around Sagani’s neck again. “I’m glad you’re home.”

The adra statue in Sagani’s pack may as well have been a mere pebble in those moments. And while there was a whisper in the back of her mind that said she needed to see the elders, to inform them the Tarneq-Ilitsaak was complete, that she had returned successful… She turned her ears from it, and whispered, “Me too, ‘Kona.”

Yakona took a deep breath. “I—oh!” As Yakona jerked away suddenly, Sagani looked down to see Itumaak nosing at a pouch on Yakona’s belt. Her daughter only laughed in response. “Hi, Itumaak,” she said, reaching out to touch his head. The fox bumped against her hand briefly before immediately turning back towards her belt. “I see you only remember me for the food.”

Sagani raised her eyebrows. “Still keep caribou jerky with you?”

“Not unless I’m leaving Massuk for something,” said Yakona. “But there’s some in the hut.”

“Let’s go, then,” Sagani said, nodding in the direction and ruffling Itumaak’s scruff. “I think both of us could use a fire and something to eat.”

Rushing to pick up her bow, Yakona continued to chatter with an excitement Sagani hadn’t seen in her since she was a child. “Najuo’s started training, too,” she said, “though they’re better with knives than a bow—like none of us predicted that.” (Sagani’s attention snapped to her pack, suddenly, as she recalled the blade she had bought her child in Defiance Bay. A faint pang of bittersweet fondness swirled through her. She hoped the Watcher was well.) “And Malaak’s been studying with Iqsen and his dad. Learning to build walls, mostly, but also other stuff.”

“Construction, huh?” Sagani mused with a faint smile. “And your father?” All at once, the realization of how long she had been gone bore down on her again. She could remember Kallu’s face, could still her the way her name and their children’s names sounded in his voice, but it was all faint. Like the memories were just on the other side of a curtain. She wanted desperately to get past it. 

Itumaak brushed against her leg, then, looking up at her with sharp blue eyes. She let a hand come to rest on his head, but his fur still left the spaces between her fingers feeling empty.

Yakona smiled, proud and sharp with secrets. “Same as usual,” she said. “I don’t think he’s changed much since you left, except he’s gotten a lot better at making that stew Aunt Galma taught him. Don’t tell him—he thinks it was always this good.”

“Oh, does he now.” Sagani’s laughter beat against her chest like a drum. To hear he was well…warmed her in a way Sagani could only have dreamed before.

Snickering conspiratorially, Yakona twirled a small charm—a whistle, of sorts—around her finger. Sagani wondered where she got it. “But what about you, Mom? You’re the one who’s been gone on a hunt for _five years_! You must have way better stories.”

“If I’m going to be telling five years’ worth of stories, ‘Kona, you can bet I’m doing it where all your siblings can hear,” Sagani said, absently noting how her boots still fit into the tracks of the village.

“I found you first, and that’s all I get?” Yakona said, crossing her arms. But a smile stayed on her lips anyway. “Mom, please.”

Memories laid themselves out before Sagani in her mind, hundreds of images to choose from. The bustling streets and maze-like rivers of Old Vailia, the other villages in the Land (and the dozen or so friends she now had among the Glamfellen), the sharp sea winds and colorful skies of the Deadfire, the forests of Eir Glanfath and the ruins filling their lands like moss… The answer came to Sagani almost before she could realize it.

“I traveled a lot of places looking for Persoq,” she said casually. “And in the end, I did find him…but I found a lot of other things—met a lot of other people—on the way.”

“Like…?” Yakona stretched the word out like a bowstring, steps almost bouncing with excitement.

Sagani turned to look her in the eye. “I met two people who told me they were Watchers,” she said, “and one of them was the real deal.”

“You’re kidding.” Yakona crossed her arms.

“Not at all,” Sagani said, looping her arm around Yakona’s shoulders. “She helped me track down Persoq, and I helped her track down a cult that’s been around for two thousand years.”

“You’re _kidding._” But Yakona’s eyes shone with rapt attention. “That’s… wow.”

Sagani nodded, humming in agreement as her home—their home—came into view. “But that happened near the end of the hunt. If you want to know the rest, you’ll have to round up your siblings. And give me _at least_ five minutes alone with your father.”

Yakona laughed and rocked back on her heels. “Just five minutes?” she asked, eyebrows up.

Her mother’s hand shot forward and rubbed across her head, mussing the beginnings of the braid there as Sagani scoffed. “You little gremlin,” she accused fondly. “Go on, find your siblings.”

Yakona didn’t stop smiling the clever grin of a child who knew more than she should, but she did eventually hurry off, leaving Sagani outside their hut with one hand outstretched towards the door.

“Yakona?” It was pushed open before she could do anything else, and Kallu ducked out, clearly scanning the street. His blue eyes were tired, shimmering with contentment and exhaustion in equal measure. “I thought I—”

There was silence as he finally seemed to _see_ Sagani, still frozen with one hand reaching out, nearly touching his shoulder. Her breath froze in her throat, and yet her body was flush with warmth as Kallu took a deep breath.

Sagani wondered if her heart could keep up with the pure relief and joy singing in her veins at that moment. “Hey, Kallu,” she said quietly, lips trembling. “I’m home.”

“Sagani,” he breathed, reaching out to crush her into his chest in a movement so fluid that Sagani almost thought she was dreaming. Almost. His beard was rough against her skin and Sagani could feel the beads on his clothes pressing against her stomach. Kallu still smelled of wood smoke and salt, the same as every blanket and curtain in the hut… he still smelled of home, and she was wrapped in it. “I thought ‘Kona was talking to herself,” he muttered. “She sounds so much like you now.”

Against the cloth on Kallu’s shoulder, Sagani hummed in acknowledgment. She hadn’t noticed, but that was fine.

“Come inside,” Kallu said after a minute. “It’s warmer—you can sit down.”

Itumaak slipped past them and into the house like any sensible creature, but Sagani felt no compulsion to move. Kallu seemed not to either, making no moves to pull away from the embrace.

Tipping her head up just slightly, Sagani brushed a kiss over his cheek. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m fine right here.” 

Her smile was met with another kiss, as gentle as it was searing, like Kallu meant to press all the missed embraces of the past years into one, single kiss. “Me, too.”

It was there that their children found them, skin red with cold but souls warm with joy, only a _little_ more than five minutes later.


End file.
